


Wolves' Den

by RaisonDetre



Series: Forever// Soulmates AU [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: But Claudia knows her shit, Claudia Stilinski... character study???, F/M, Fluff, Human!Stiles, I'm obsessed with Claudia and you can tell, M/M, Mates, Meet the parents I guess, Oblivious Sheriff, Papa Stilinski is not happy, Possessive!Peter, Stiles is still like three, nothing sexual happens at all, or will happen for a v long time, possibly, soul mates, werewolf!Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:33:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6150775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisonDetre/pseuds/RaisonDetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Talia invites the Stilinskis to dinner to discuss the relationship between Stiles and Peter. Even though the sheriff is pointing a gun at Peter's forehead, the werewolf thinks it's going pretty swell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wolves' Den

**Author's Note:**

> I'm obsessed with Claudia Stilinski help me.
> 
> Thank you for reading! I'm literally taking prompts. So, if you want to comment any regarding this series, comment away because I need the practice. :)

After the day in the forest, when Peter had discovered his one other half had lived his entire existence underneath his nose for three years, the young Hale arranged a meeting with the Stilinskis. 

With help from Talia, who luckily had an inexpendable connection with Claudia, the Hales had invited the sheriff and his wife to dinner. The main pack house had been cleaned by a grumbling Derek and an annoyed Cora, but it managed to become spotless and smelling like the pork ribs Talia’s husband slaved over for the past day. 

Peter was buzzing with energy, dressed in his nicest pair of casual denim jeans and his button-up shirt. Because this was supposed to be casual. Talia had outlawed ties, slacks, business jackets, and anything else that would make the sheriff raise his eyebrows with judgement.

Sheriff Stilinski was a man’s man. He loved pretty things, but he pretended that he liked long discussions about guns and football better. And if Peter showed his full-fledged attire he wore whenever the chance was prompted, John would not be impressed; Peter would look ridiculous in a suit and tie at a barbeque anyway.

Talia curled up in the wooden bench on the front porch, watching the children puppy-pile even though Derek was beginning to say he was growing out of it and Laura rolled her eyes every time Cora would pull her in. 

Peter and Talia’s brother, Taron, had allowed his own children to run from his house a couple acres away to their Aunt’s, Riley and Brock joined their cousins with excited laughs and tight embraces. 

Peter watched from the open doorway of the home, leaning his shoulder on the frame with his hands slid into the pockets of his jeans. As an uncle, he was fond of all the little boogers, even Laura- who acted like the world was against her solely because she just entered middle school. But, staring at the youngest of the bunch, Cora, who still had to be watched for just-in-case-someone-played-too-rough, he realized the tiny, perfect girl was the same age of his own tiny, perfect Stiles.

“Don’t think about it,” Talia whispered knowingly, grinning at her younger brother; she patted the empty space on the wood and made room. 

Peter took the seat next to his Alpha; as soon as he found a comfortable position, Talia’s barefeet found a place directly on top of his lap. 

“Fifteen years is going to go by so fast,” she grinned, combing a hand through her long black hair before fixing her brother’s shirt, adjusting it lower to make it less Peter and more easy-going. 

“Don’t even remind me,” Peter whispered roughly. He bent his head back, looking up at the ceiling of the porch and wondering how he was possibly going to survive it. 

“I’m serious,” the older Hale assured him. “It feels like Laura was just born, now she’s nearly twelve. In a year, she’ll be thirteen,” Talia shrugs, folding her hands around her lean frame. “If that isn’t scary, then I don’t know what is.” 

Peter rolls his blue eyes. “Laura is your first born and daughter, she’ll be Alpha one day, of course it feels like she’s growing up too fast,” he replies. “He’s my soulmate. I’ll be counting every second.” 

Talia nods along in understanding just as Laura glances up from the pups’ pile, her dark gaze zoning in on her mother. “Momma, they’re here!” 

Talia grins. “Very good, Laura.” 

With Alpha training comes intense exercises from a young age, right now Laura is working hard on listening to her surroundings. 

Peter can hear them, too. The Sheriff isn’t driving his Cruiser, but the Jeep that Claudia owns and drives all around Beacon Hills wildly. 

The rules are ingrained in the pups’ mind already, but Peter reminds them with a sharp voice not to act ‘wolfish’. They can get away with being very affectionate kids, but explaining extra fur and pointy-teeth to human company is unexplainable. 

The Jeep comes into view a minute later, driving up the gravel driveway slowly with Claudia behind the steering wheel. The kids immediately pull flush to the Jeep as soon as she parks it, because Claudia babysat all of the Hale kids nearly every weekend before Stiles had came along.

“Claud!” Talia throws up her hands and immediately descends from the porch, careless of her barefeet. She runs to the Jeep, joining the pack children and opening the door for her close friend. 

Claudia easily slides out of the car, laughing and giving any open arms hugs. She’s got an untouched beauty about her, obviously smart and dangerously curious. Peter recognized the same trait in Stiles just from the forest mishap. The twenty-six year old is dressed in a pair of long overalls, rolled up to the ankles and covering up her spaghetti-strap shirt. She’s unorthodox, but Peter doesn’t mind. 

On the other side of the car, John Stilinski is dressed in a plaid shirt and holey denim jeans. He’s wearing a hat and he looks dangerously like a dad. Immediately, he goes for the backseat and Peter moves from his place on the bench to see if John needs any assistance in bringing in any food. 

As Peter reaches John, he realizes Stiles is in the Jeep and sleeping. _Oh shit_ , the kid was supposed to be dropped off at Claudia’s mom’s for a date-night with his grandma, at least that’s what Peter’s eavesdropping while Talia spoke to her over the phone had concluded. 

“Howdy, Sheriff,” Peter smiles from behind him, hand resting on the top of the Jeep’s open back door. 

John turns around and meets Peter’s grin with his own. “Peter!” He says. “How you been doing?”

“Good, thanks, and you? Not getting lost in anymore woods, right?” The werewolf forces himself to keep his attention on the man instead of his mate. 

It pays off. John laughs at his joke and turns back around to Stiles, who is still oblivious to the world outside of the Jeep. “Could you take Stiles? I hope it’s fine he’s here, Gran got sick, she got sick huh, honey,” the last half of the sentence is spoken in a soft voice, obviously meant for Stiles. 

Peter watches from above John’s broad shoulders to see the child blink lazily, obviously still a bit of a sluggard from his nap. 

Stiles clutches his own cashmere sweater before his tiny hands go to his dad’s, fixated on his father’s voice and gentle efforts to wake up. 

“I can take him, yeah,” Peter tells him. At his voice, the three year old recognizes him. His amber eyes abruptly splay wide, fully aware within a second and his pink lips splitting into an adorable smile. 

“Petewa!” Stiles claps happily from his car seat.

“I don’t know what the deal is with him; he hasn’t shut up about you since Tuesday,” John shakes his head and moves back from Stiles’s car seat with the boy in tow. 

“I’m just good with babies,” Peter smiles easily, watching as Stiles excitedly reached out at once to the werewolf. It’ll be the first time Peter has ever touched or been in this close proximity to his mate.

John practically shoves the boy into his arms before he disappears to the back of the Jeep to pile his own arms with Claudia’s homemade potato salad and green beans. 

Peter is glad the sheriff is out of view. The moment Stiles lands in his arms, his eyes morph into an icy blue and his canines begin to poke out of his gums, his hands clasp impossibly tight around the toddler and he inhales deeply. His nose is instantaneously met with the cool of sea salt, and sunlight, and lemon, as well as the scent of youth, today it smells like Elmer’s Glue and the wax of crayons.

“Wow,” Stiles grins up, pushing his hands up at Peter’s blatant canines. “Cat!” He laughs, throwing his head back but keeping his grasp around the man’s cheeks. 

“The opposite, really, darling,” Peter told him with a smile. He uses the words to help him remember where is he, what he’s doing. The current moment is not the best time to completely wolf out. 

The toddler watches with an awed expressions as Peter’s eyes blink back to normal and his teeth retract, leaving him in the complete form of his human self. 

“Now, that’s a secret between you and I,” the werewolf whispers to the boy, taking the chance to scent his porcelain neck and rubbing his own scratchy cheek to it. Stiles laughs at the sudden attack, but nods with seriousness.

“Shhh, cat,” Stiles tells him with understanding, very unlike a giggle-crazy toddler. 

*

 

Claudia sits beside Talia and Derek, who looks up at her with mild awe- to Peter’s understanding, Derek has always had a bit of a crush on Claudia. In the middle of John and Peter, Stiles is up in his booster seat and grins across at Cora who mirrors his age. 

During dinner, Claudia goes around the table of werewolves and tells stories and fills the room with her laugh. She makes the room come _alive_ ; when Peter glances at John, he’s met  
with a dopey man who stares up at his wife with unmatched wonder. 

Claudia is easy to fall in love with, Peter can tell by the way she’s captured an audience of werewolves with stories of mundane life. Her hand movements are wild and her eyes are bright. Whatever word falls out of Talia’s or anyone else, she matches it tenfold, with cleverness that rivals Peter’s.

He’s intrigued by that fact. Not many have the intelligence to actually keep up with him. 

Peter watches her as much as he’s watching Stiles, studying the traits they share. The boy’s mind already shares the same thinking pattern, it’s obvious in the way he’s keeping up with his mother, nodding along seriously and making a comment when Claudia’s stories involve him. 

He prays all of this won’t melt away by the end of the night. 

 

*

 

After dessert, homemade cookies Derek and Laura feverishly made, Talia sends the children to their second story playroom and orders Laura to stick around as chaperone. Stiles goes, too, after a few seconds of begging to stay and sit in Peter’s lap, but John simply had to give him a certain look and he was clutching Derek’s hand and following him up the stairs.

Claudia and John are polite, helping with the dishes even though Talia’s husband, Charlie, assures them that he’s fine by himself. Peter busies himself with placing leftovers in plastic containers and Talia disappears to check on the children after a particularly loud crash. 

When she comes back, John is sitting on the back porch with a beer in his hand and his wife beside him, staring into the bonfire Peter lit. If this goes well, Talia will call the children down and allow them to roast marshmallows. 

Charlie is across John, talking to Claudia about the latest episode of a show both of them follow. 

“You all look nice and warm,” if Talia sounds more wolfish than usual, it’s just because the moonlight is causing hyper awareness on her skin. 

“We are,” Claudia smiles. “Thank you so much for the amazing dinner,” she thanks for the third time and John nods along with his wife. 

“It’s been wonderful catching up, I haven’t gotten out to see you enough,” Claudia told her old friend, and Talia shook her head and grinned.

“You’ve been around plenty, we’ve got phones now… you’ve got Stiles to watch after, anyway,” the oldest Hale replies easily. She moves to sit on the bench beside Peter. Her hands wrap around his shoulders, soothing his subconscious shaking. Nerves. 

“Speaking of Stiles,” Talia begins. “Wonderful boy, reminds me of you, Claud.”

John agrees. “Exactly what I’ve been telling her, she doesn’t see it,” he shakes his head with fondness at his wife. 

Peter sits with his hands folded and his head down. Particularly, he isn’t interested in the conversation. He won’t be until it begins to center around the real reason why they’re making small talk. Instead, he listens carefully, trying to catch anything from Stiles in the upstairs playroom. 

Right now, he’s explaining, in intense detail, how to tell a boy puppy from a girl puppy. By the small gasps from Cora, she may be mildly terrified. Peter hides a laugh by smashing the back of his hand into his lips, drowning with fondness for his young mate.

He turns his attention back to the conversation just as a click sounds above his forehead. 

So, he missed an important chunk of conversation, obviously. 

John is hovering above him, his hand steady on his police-issued pistol. The click was taking the safety off. 

“What the hell are you saying?” John’s voice is caught between betrayal and disgust. It doesn’t sound right, but it’ll remain like that until Talia can calm him down. “First you say you’re damn werewolves-- and now you’re fuckin’.... now you’re my fuckin’ son’s soulmate? He’s three!” 

Talia is at John’s left side while Claudia is on his right. From both women, the stench of fear and disgust is absent. But Talia is raging angry and Claudia is surprised and maybe mildly amused. 

“My hands are up, officer,” Peter tells him, cheekily. Even though it’s fairly inappropriate. But everything about the situation is the complete opposite of uniform, so Peter doesn’t care. 

“Stop acting like an animal, John!” Claudia’s voice is right at her husband’s ear, shocked and scandalized. 

“They’re werewolves, Claud- and- and- and they’re saying our boy is _his_ boy,” John shakes his head wildly. “No, no. Nope,” the stench of utter hopelessness sticks to the sheriff- at least he knows he’ll never outrun the fate between his son and Peter.

“And- and, why aren’t you freaking out?” John finally takes his horrified stare off of Peter to wife, though his gun stays pressed to the werewolf’s forehead. 

“Because,” Claudia rolls her amber eyes and places her hands on her hips, as if they had already gone through this. “I’ve been babysitting the Hales since I was sixteen, I put two and two together right after I found Laura with a dead squirrel between her teeth.” 

“Her teething lasted forever, didn’t it?” Charlie says, like there isn’t a loaded gun pointed to his brother-in-law’s brain. 

Talia rolls her eyes at her husband, but the group of adults is still strung with tension. 

“And you didn’t tell me, Claudia?!” John looks around as if he’s being pranked and it is all being caught on tape. 

“When would ‘hey, I think the Hales are werewolves,’ come up in conversation?!” Claudia exclaims, as if she’s surprised her husband is reacting the way he is. Peter thinks John is taking it quite well, all things considering. 

“You literally tell me the weirdest things all the time- the last time we went to the vet, you told me you thought Dr. Deaton is into some bad mojo, woman!” John’s voice is lost. 

“She’s right, but it isn’t bad mojo, uh- good mojo,” Peter finally speaks up, forcing John to whip his attention back to the werewolf in question. “He’s Talia’s advisor, helps him with all of the… y’know, wolf stuff.” 

Claudia grins happily. “Did I not call it?” Her words remind Peter of how young the couple truly is. John is hardly twenty-six, Claudia hitting somewhere between twenty-four and twenty-five. Hardly a few years older than Peter and wrapped around a mess created by fate.

“So, what do you want with our son? You can’t have him,” John scowls, his expression ever angry. 

Talia shakes her head, placing her hand on the man’s wrist as she gives him a look that promises danger if he keeps pointing the gun at her baby brother. “Put it down and we will continue, I’ll answer everything you want.” 

“No,” the man says through gritted teeth. “I want this bastard to answer everything, every single question I have, or we’re done, I’ll pack our stuff and disappear with my son. And I’ll shoot anyone who follows, I swear to God.”

Peter wants to roll his eyes at the theatrics but nods along. The same expression is mirrored in Claudia. 

When John finally takes down the gun and hands it to Talia’s open palm, Peter leans up to the older man, tired of being intimidated by a human.

“If you ever try to take your son from me, I will show you what good your bullets will do to a werewolf,” Peter tells him through a sharp smile, his eyes blink a dangerous blue and he can _feel_ the _wild_ raise up in his chest and cloud his train of human thought. “Swear to God,” he mimicks.

“Peter,” Talia lowly warns, but she doesn’t do anything. Better for John to know where he stands in a world full of wolves.

He retracts, chancing a look at Claudia. She stood still devoid of fear but awestruck. 

John clenched his jaw, but the threat was in place and Peter would make well on his promise if he ever needed to. 

“Now, you had questions, Sheriff,” Peter continues, leaning back into the comfortable patio chair. “But we have rules.”

 

*

“Are you shitting with me, Claudia?! Stiles isn’t allowed out of the county without a Hale? He’s fuckin’ pack, whatever that means, he’s-- he’s supposed to be placed in the Hales’ lives and we’re fine with it? You’re fine with it? Peter is twenty-one years old, and he’s fucking crazy, did you not remember high school Peter? I was just a damn rookie but the year he turned fifteen, he beat the ever-fucking shit out of the Whittemore’s eighteen year-old son!” John had managed to convince the wolves to let them have a moment of themselves, speaking around the empty bonfire as they checked on the children upstairs. 

“Well, he’s a werewolf, I wouldn’t expect him to do anything but be able to whip that little snot!” Claudia replies cleverly, shrugging her shoulders before staring pointedly at her husband. “I don’t know what your problem is now, you conveniently forgot that until ten seconds ago, been buddies all night!” 

“He’s a fucking werewolf. Who wants to mate with our son,” John says so dryly that Claudia almost laughs, but making her husband feel like he’s been made a joke won’t get anyone anywhere. So, she hides her smile in the back of her hand. 

“He’s a werewolf, Jonathan, who wants to eventually mate with our son when Stiles can decide for himself what he wants,” Claudia continues after she wipes off of her grin. Her tone becomes serious in her efforts to convince John that maybe this isn’t an exactly bad thing. 

“Fine,” John smiles wildly as if a lightbulb had suddenly appeared above his head. “He can come back into Stiles’s life when the kid isn’t a kid- see him in fifteen years,” he manically laughs because this couldn’t actually be happening to John. He did not marry a woman who would hand her child off to the wolves so easily. 

Claudia raises her eyebrows up in defense as if she can read her husband’s mind. “If he doesn’t do anything inappropriate, I’m not keeping Peter from Stiles.” 

“Are you actually considering-- _Claudia!_ ” The Sheriff rubs his temples as if it will help him understand why he’s been dropped into an episode of the _Twilight Zone_. 

“What?” Claudia raises her voice only a hair, but her point gets across: she is deadly serious. “Peter is one more pair of eyes looking out for my son, his job in the pack is protection, for God’s sake. And the pack is practically built-in best friends, and Talia- Talia wouldn’t let any of this happen if she knew Peter would fuck it up.” 

“Talia told us Peter would be in our son’s life even if we don’t want him to be, Claud!” John reminds his wife, wide eyes desperately searching for a place on her face that shows her maybe considering his side. 

“And I’ve known Talia for years,” Claudia continues passionately. She throws her hands in the air as if that can help further her words. “If I didn’t trust her, I wouldn’t be considering this. Why not save our son all the heartbreaks? The hopeless searching? Why not give him the man he’s destined for?” She finishes with desperate amber eyes blinking up at her husband, utterly confounded as to why he would rather allow his son go through inevitable heartbreak when guranteed love was not only being offered, but promised. 

“Because he’s seventeen years older than Stiles- hell, even if it was Derek I would try, but Peter is an adult,” John can already feel his defenses weaken- because it’s true. Why let his son go through life searching for something that will never come. But he shoves that thought down. 

“And in fifteen years, Stiles will be, too,” Claudia moves to her husband, pressing her finger into the plaid pattern of his button-up shirt. “And when he finds out you kept him from Peter, why his chest felt so much more hollower than his friends around him, he will never forgive you. That’s a fourth of a lifetime being stolen from them.” 

“I don’t care if he never forgives me,” he lies quietly.

Claudia raises a thick eyebrow, rolling her eyes along with her head until she turns back to her husband with an unconvinced look. “Yes, you do.” 

John swallows deeply before he opens his mouth again. “Okay, I do, but- but Peter is almost my age!” 

“Honey,” she smiles a smile that should be trademarked as her own. It’s wide and carefree and hopelessly lethal. “Don’t worry about this. If Peter does anything, Talia _and your gun_ will make sure Peter pays for it.” 

“I feel like we’re entering a den of wolves,” John finishes quietly, something he meant to whisper to himself.

“That is exactly what we are doing,” Claudia’s voice drops as if her words were only meant for her own ears, too. 

 

*

 

“I daw lots of pictures, all the time, cat, but not’s good as my mommy. Maybe I’ll get’s good as my mommy, but she’s like… _weally, weally_ good. Like, it’s her job. And she can daw me _weaaal_ good, she daws me all the time, and there’s one where it’s purple- do you know that color?” Stiles stops doing what he’s doing, which is waving his arms up wide as he tries to further his story. He drops them seriously to look up at Peter, who sits across from him on the alphabet carpet of the playroom. 

At Peter’s nod, the little boy continues.

“I know it, too, it’s my favorite color. So, my mommy painted it all in purple, and it’s so cool’n’n’n it’s jus’ so pwetty, so I tried to do you, and Dewek says it’s ugly, and then I called him ugly, but then I said sowwy, ‘cause my mommy says I should always say sowwy when I’m mean. But I think it’s pwetty… do you… like it?” Stiles trips over his words nervously, even at such a young age, he knows Peter’s opinion is important to him, for some unbeknown reason. 

“I think…” Peter takes it gingerly, going over every single detail and taking it in as Stiles watches with an curiosity. 

For a three year old, the drawing actually shows as much careful thought one can manage from being so young. It still practically looks like a stick man drawn in purple, but the effort behind it is obvious, and when has and when will Peter be displeased with Stiles?

“It’s a masterpiece, Stiles. It belongs in a museum, it’s so beautiful!” Peter cringes away from it as if it was so gorgeous that it hurt to look at. “Too… beautiful!” He dramatically shrieks, sending a wink at his young mate when he started to giggle uncontrollably.

“Thank you,” the werewolf finishes sincerely before bending down to affectionately ruffle the child’s dark hair with his hand. “I shall treasure this always.” 

“You mean it?!” Stiles smiles from underneath all of the attention, his cheeks a ruddy red and his eyes kindled with excitement. 

He crouches beside the child, until the older man is hovering directly above him, close enough for Stiles to feel the heat that comes off of his body like a furnace. “I’ll destroy anything that tries to take it away from me,” Peter assures him. 

“But what if someone weally, weally wants it?” Stiles asks, ignorant of how far Peter’s promises are. 

“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart, it’ll always be mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> All thoughts, comments, prompts appreciated!


End file.
